Performance as Protest

Catalog description

?Performance as Protest? examines the art and act of performance as an influential model for social activism, civil disobedience, and community mobilization. Students delve into the works of historical and contemporary artists and cultural figures who radicalized their creative practices and platforms to promote social advocacy and revolution. Ranging from participatory mass actions to intimate personal storytelling, how can a performance disrupt a space, a consciousness, a culture? From protest anthems to pop lyrics, from to pop-up theater to organized sit-ins, modules explore the performing body as a site of healing, empowerment, and resistance to systemic injustices and erasures. Students research and respond to a diverse, international constellation of manifestos, manifestations, and their placemaking through writing, building, and activating their own socially-engaged bodies of work. (PMA-AU)